Category Archives: Patricia Highsmith

A really interesting post by Moira at Clothes in Books has got me thinking about really frightening stories. You know, the ones you can’t put down, but at the same time, scare the wits out of you. Of course, each of us is frightened by different things, so the stories that have scared you probably won’t be the stories that have scared me.

That said though, and because it’s Hallowe’en, here are a few stories that I found really chilling:

The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe

You’ll probably already know that this is the story of Roderick Usher and his sister Madeleine. Usher is suffering from several complications from anxiety disorders; Madeleine is also ill and seems to fall have catalyptic seizures. Usher writes to a friend – the narrator of the story – asking for his help. The narrator arrives and right away is sobered by the grim physical and psychical atmosphere of the home. But he settles in and tries to help his friend. Little by little, the house and grounds seem to take on an eerie life of their own, and although the narrator doesn’t quite want to believe Usher’s claim that the house is sentient, some strange things begin to happen. It all ends in tragedy, and to me, what’s creepiest about this story is how things we imagine can take on lives of their own. In this case, they turn out to be all too real, but even when they aren’t, the mind can conjure up some terrible things.

The Trial – Franz Kafka

This is the story of Josef K., an ordinary enough junior bank manager who is accused of a crime by two unidentified agents. They won’t detail the crime, nor will they tell him who employs them. K. isn’t imprisoned, but he is told to wait for further instructions from the Committee of Affairs. K. is summoned to a hearing, but every indication is that he will not really have a chance to make his case – that he has no idea what he might have done wrong, and that the court has made a mistake. Everything about the hearing seems engineered against him. He hires an Advocate who ends up doing no good, and as the story goes on, matters spin more and more out of control. As those who’ve read this story know, the more K. tries to make sense of it all and find out the truth, the more surreal things get, and the more obvious it is that there is only one fate for him. And that’s part of what’s very chilling about this story: that lack of control. There’s also a haunting question of what is and isn’t real, as well as the question of whether our fates are decided for us.

The Lottery – Shirley Jackson

This short story takes place in what seems like a normal small town. Everyone’s gathering for an annual lottery, a town tradition. The way the lottery works, each family chooses a member to draw from a black wooden box – the same box that has been used for the lottery since anyone can remember. The story follows the fortunes of one particular family that’s drawn this year’s ticket. It’s hard to say more without spoiling the story for those who haven’t read it. I can say this though: what’s chilling about the story is how normal everything seems.

Don’t Look Behind You – Fredric Brown

Brown involves the reader directly in this short story, and that adds considerably to its chill. It begins like this:

‘Just sit back and relax, now. Try to enjoy this; it’s going to be the last story you ever read, or nearly the last. After you finish it you can sit there and stall awhile, you can find excuses to hang around your house, or your room, or your office, wherever you’re reading this; but sooner or later you’re going to have to get up and go out. That’s where I’m waiting for you: outside. Or maybe closer than that. Maybe in this room.’

Then the narrator goes on to tell the story of a printer named Justin, a suave man named Harley, and what happens when they get involved with some dangerous people. The end in particular is very creepy – or was to me.

Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith

This story starts off normally enough. Guy Haines is on a cross-country train ride to visit his estranged wife Miriam. That’s when he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, who’s also on a journey. The two get to talking and begin to commiserate: Haines tells Bruno about his wife and Bruno tells Haines about his father, whom he hates. Then Bruno suggests that each one should commit the other’s murder. If Bruno kills Haines’ wife, and Haines kills Bruno’s father, there’s no motive to connect either murderer to either victim. Haines jokingly agrees, sure that Bruno isn’t serious. He is though, and as the story goes on, we see how Haines is drawn deeper and deeper into Bruno’s dysfunctional, mentally twisted world. And that’s what’s chilling about this story, at least to me. Oh, and I recommend Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 flim adaptation of the story. It’s a little different, but no less haunting…

A Judgement in Stone – Ruth Rendell

This novel has one of the most famous first sentences – and I think one of the most powerful – in the genre:

‘Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.’

Right from there we know that the well-off and well-educated Coverdale family is doomed. The story tells how George and Jacqueline Coverdale hire Eunice Parchman to be their housekeeper. Tragically, they don’t find out much about her, but she seems to suit, and at first, all goes well. But the new housekeeper is hiding something that she is desperate not to reveal. As the story goes on, she gets more and more paranoid, and the Coverdale family gets closer and closer to danger, although they are eerily unaware of it. When one of the family members accidentally finds out the truth, this seals their fate. One of the truly frightening things about this story is how easily everything goes horribly wrong. The Coverdales aren’t stupid, but you could say they’re comfortably unaware of the danger that awaits them. They’re not too different really from a lot of everyday people, and that’s creepy too.

So there you have it – a few stories that I found really frightening. What about you? Do you dare to share?

Thanks, Moira, for the inspiration. Hey, folks, have a look at Moira’s list. And while you’re on the hunt for terrifying tales, you’ll also want to visit Fiction Fan’s Book Reviews every Tuesday for Tuesday Terror!! Lots of frightfully good suggestions! You may not want to be alone when you do, though….

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising.

In Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Dock (AKA Hickory DIckory Death), Hercule Poirot and Inspector Sharpe look into several odd thefts and murders that occur at a student hostel. As a part of that investigation, they get to know the residents and find out about their backgrounds. One of those residents is Elizabeth Johnston, a brilliant, highly driven law student who is interested, so it seems, only in her work. At one point, Poirot and Sharpe are discussing the likelihood of each resident being the killer. Here’s what Poirot says about Elizabeth Johnson:

‘The West Indian girl Elizabeth Johnston has probably the best brains of anyone in the Hostel. She has subordinated her emotional life to her brain – that is dangerous.’

It certainly can be dangerous, but there are people who are more or less completely emotionally detached. It’s difficult to write about them because very often, emotionally detached characters feel ‘flat.’ On the one hand, it’s healthy not to get too emotionally caught up in life. But on the other, emotions are a part of the human experience, so we’re accustomed to characters who have them and are sometimes driven by them. And in real life, many people are like that. So it takes skill to make an emotionally detached character interesting enough to keep the reader’s attention. There are some of them out there, though.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes finds the problems he investigates much more interesting as a rule than the people with whom he interacts. As he looks at evidence, makes deductions and so on, he often remains emotionally detached. And yet, he isn’t as completely detached as perhaps he might like to be. For instance, in The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Holmes gets a new client Violet Hunter. She’s been offered a position as governess to Jeprho Rucastle’s six-year-old son. Rucastle offers her a generous salary, but the position comes with some odd requests that unsettle her a little. They make Holmes uneasy too, and in fact he counsels her not to take the position. At first, she listens to him and declined the offer. Then, Rucastle increases the salary he proposes to pay. This time Violet can’t refuse and she takes the job. Holmes tells her that if ever she should need him, to contact him. This she does when some frightening things begin to happen, and Holmes and Watson rush to the Rucastle home as soon as they can, hoping to prevent disaster for Violet. On the one hand, Holmes is detached in terms of deducing what’s going on at the house and why Violet Hunter is in danger. On the other, it’s clear that he feels for her and wants her to stay safe – not a real case of complete lack of emotion. That said though, Holmes is often detached.

So is Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. He can be personable when he wants to be and he has a circle of friends and acquaintances. He even marries as the series of novels featuring him moves along. But he is emotionally detached from most of his fellow humans. He’s responsible for a great deal of crime, including murder. Yet, although he doesn’t delight in killing, he doesn’t have qualms about the crimes he commits unless you count his not wanting to be caught. It’s an interesting case of a character who may be intellectually really interesting, but certainly doesn’t have the full range of human emotions.

In Deon Meyer’s Blood Safari, we are introduced to Martin Lemmer, a bodyguard who is employed by a personal protection company called Body Armour. Emma le Roux hires the company when she decides to make a dangerous trip and Lemmer is assigned to protect her. Emma is searching for her brother Jacobus who everyone thought died in a skirmish with poachers years earlier. But she has reason to believe he may still be alive and she wants to find out. She and Lemmer travel from Cape Town to the Lowveld to find out the truth, and in the course of their trip, run up against some very dangerous people who won’t hesitate at all to kill. Especially at the beginning of the novel, Lemmer is emotionally quite detached from his clients. In fact he makes a point of that. He is also emotionally detached from the work he has to do. He’s not at all what you’d call trigger-happy, but his job is to protect his client.

There’s a really interesting case of emotional detachment in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Christopher Boone is a teenager with autism. He’s reasonably high-functioning, so he can interact with others, learn academics and so on. But his autism prevents him from really making social and emotional connections with the people in his life. When a neighbour’s dog is killed, Christopher decides to be a detective like Sherlock Holmes and find out who is responsible. As he sets about it, we see how detached he is from the way others feel and react. We also see how that detachment is helpful (in the sense that he is not hampered by social niceties), but at the same time impedes him. In a way, the reader can tell a lot more than Christopher can, at least at first, just by paying attention to the emotional/social site of people.

Malcolm Mackay’s Glasgow trilogy shares the lives of Glasgow’s criminal world, including the lives of the professional hit-men who are a part of it. In The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter, How a Gunman Says Goodbye and The Sudden Arrival of Violence, we see how emotionally detached people can be from others. Several of the characters in these novels like their work and take professional pride in what they do. But they are detached from others. And in a way, the more detached they are, the better they do their work.

Emotions can of course be destructive, and it’s healthy to know how to let go of them and ‘step back.’ But what about complete emotional detachment? What do you think about emotionally detached characters? Do you find they take away from a story? Do they seem too ‘flat’ to you? Or do you find them interesting? If you’re a writer, have you created detached characters? How do you do that, considering most of us are emotionally connected with the world?

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Simon and Garfunkel’s I Am a Rock.

Nobody’s perfect. That’s a very obvious point, but when it comes to crime-fictional sleuths, I think it bears a little reflection. I think most of us would probably agree that we don’t want our protagonists to be too perfect. After all, a perfect protagonist isn’t realistic. So characters with no weaknesses and faults don’t feel well-developed or authentic.

In the early days of crime fiction, a lot of character depth was arguably less important than it is now. This isn’t to say of course that no classic or Golden Age detective stories have well-rounded protagonists. But the emphasis was on the plot rather than on the evolution of a flawed but still appealing and believable protagonist.

Just as one example, one of the criticisms I’ve read of Dorothy Sayers’ work is that her Lord Peter Wimsey is too perfect. He gets it right too often. Whether you agree with that particular claim or not, it reflects a more general criticism of some of the ‘heroes’ of the stories of that era. People want their protagonists to be believable and that means to be less than perfect.

One response to this interest in the ‘not perfect’ protagonist has been what people sometimes call the ‘anti-hero.’ Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley is arguably one example of that sort of character. Ripley is not without any feelings, but he is amoral. He’s been mixed up in fraud, murder, theft and other crimes; on that level, he’s got many deep flaws.

There are also characters such as Jim Thompson’s Lou Ford, whom we meet in The Killer Inside Me. On the surface, Ford seems to be what everyone thinks he is – a pleasant if dull local sheriff’s deputy. Then crime comes to Central City, Texas. First, there’s a vicious beating. Then there’s a murder. As the investigation goes on, we begin to see what Lou Ford is really like, and we learn about his past. Without spoiling the story, I think it’s fair to say that Ford is not a classic detective-story ‘hero.’

There are more modern examples too of the ‘anti hero’ sort of protagonist. For example, some people feel that Leif G.W. Persson’s Evert Bäckström is an anti-hero. Certainly he’s not ‘politically correct.’ He’s not easy to work with, he’s egotistical and he’s bigoted. By most people’s estimation he’s a fairly deeply flawed character.

And yet, the trilogy featuring Bäckström and his team has been well-regarded. A lot of people think that The Killer Inside Me is a classic noir story. And Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels have certainly gotten a great deal of praise. So it’s possible for an ‘anti hero’ to be appealing enough to hold readers’ interest.

That said though, I think we could all think of examples of stories we’ve read with one too many broken, demon-haunted, drunken detectives. I won’t make a list; you’ve all read your share I’m sure. We’ve all had the experience too of reading books we didn’t enjoy because there simply nothing to make us care about the protagonist. So simply giving a character many, many flaws isn’t enough to make her or him interesting.

What’s the balance, then? A protagonist who’s too perfect is not just unrealistic, but can also be annoying. But a protagonist who is too full of weaknesses, flaws and negative qualities puts readers off. How flawed does a protagonist need to be for that character to seem realistic? How many flaws are just too many? When do your ‘eye roll’ moments start? Of course, different people will have different reactions, but I would really be interested in your input.

If you’re a writer, how do you decide how many weaknesses your protagonist is going to have? What’s your strategy for making your protagonist human enough to be believable, but not so full of flaws as to be off-putting?

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s She’s Right on Time.

It’s interesting how sometimes people tell things to complete strangers that they wouldn’t necessarily tell even to a good friend or family member. In some ways, odd as it seems, strangers can be easier to talk to, since they have no stake in a problem. Then too, a stranger is someone one may very well not see again, so there’s less risk in unburdening oneself. Of course, when that happens in crime fiction, you never know quite where it will lead…

In Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train, we meet Katherine Grey. She’s spent the last ten years as a paid companion in the village of St. Mary Mead (and oddly enough, she doesn’t meet Miss Marple…). When her employer dies, Katherine unexpectedly inherits a fortune. She decides to use some of it to travel, something she’s never had the luxury of doing before, and decides to start by visiting some distant cousins in Nice. Katherine’s taking the famous Blue Train to Nice when she meets wealthy Ruth Van Aldin Kettering, who’s on the same train. Ruth is dealing with some personal problems and a dilemma, and Katherine strikes her as a sympathetic sort of listener. So Ruth unburdens herself at least to an extent. It turns out that her conversation with Katherine is one of the last that Ruth has before she is murdered that night. So when the train stops at Nice, the police want to interview Katherine and before she knows it, she’s embroiled in a murder mystery. Hercule Poirot has also come to Nice, and he works with Katherine and the police to find out who murdered Ruth Kettering and why.

A train is also the backdrop for Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train. Guy Haines is on a cross-country train trip to visit his estranged wife Miriam. He’s unhappy in his marriage and has a lot on his mind. So when he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, who’s also on a journey, he’s happy for a sympathetic listener. Bruno too has his share of troubles. He’s got a very dysfunctional relationship with his father, and finds Haines a pleasant person to talk to about it. Then the conversation works round to a solution that Bruno proposes. His idea is that each man will commit the other man’s murder. Since neither man has a motive to commit ‘the other murder,’ the police won’t get suspicious. Haines doesn’t take Bruno seriously at first, but confiding in a stranger gets him into serious trouble when Bruno kills Miriam and then demands that Haines fulfil his side of the bargain.

A chance conversation in a taxi gets architect Stephen Booker involved in crime in Robert Pollock’s Loophole or, How to Rob a Bank. Booker has been laid off from his job with an architect firm, and hasn’t been able to find another in his field. So, in order to make ends meet, he’s taken a night job as a taxi driver. That way, so he thinks, he can use his days to keep looking for a new professional position. One night, his passenger is professional thief Mike Daniels. Daniels and his team of fellow thieves are planning to rob the City Savings Deposit Bank. But they’ve run into several logistics obstacles since the bank is well-protected and equipped with the latest in security devices and procedures. Daniels is an affable person and not a bad listener, so it’s not long before Booker tells him the story of his job loss and his frustrations. When Daniels learns Booker’s story, he realises that Booker could be just the man who could help the team get past the bank’s security barriers. So Daniels cultivates a friendship with Booker and then proposes that Booker join the team. Booker finally agrees and the team prepares for the robbery. Everything is planned down to the last detail. But no-one has anticipated the major storm that blows in unexpectedly…

In Aaron Elkins’ Loot, art expert/historian Benjamin ‘Ben’ Revere gets a call from pawn shop owner Simeon Pawlovsky. Pawlovsky has just gotten a painting that could be worth something and he wants Revere’s professional opinion. Revere agrees and takes a look at the painting. It turns out that it’s likely an extremely valuable Velázquez that was one of many ‘acquired’ by the Nazis during World War II. When Pawlovsky is murdered, Revere thinks that perhaps finding out how the painting got into the shop will lead to the killer’s identity. So he starts tracing the painting forward from when the Nazis took it to the present day. Before his death, Pawlovsky had arranged for Revere to meet his grand-niece Alexandra ‘Alex’ Porter. When the two meet for the first time, Alex finds Ben pleasant to talk to and ends up telling him a lot about her family background. In turn Ben finds her pleasant to talk to as well, and it’s interesting to see how the opportunity to talk to a stranger is helpful to them both. In fact, Alex proves to be a useful ally as Ben traces the painting and in the end, finds out the truth about Pawlovsky’s murder.

There’s a very interesting kind of opening up to a stranger in Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice. Thea Farmer is a former school principal who’s had a dream house built in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains. She’s all ready for this next phase of her life when some disastrous financial decisions mean she has to sell her beautiful home. As the novel begins she’s had to take the house next door to her dream home – a house she calls ‘the hovel.’ As if that’s not bad enough, new neighbours buy her perfect home and move in. As it is, Thea isn’t much for company and would prefer to keep as much to herself as possible. But Frank Campbell and Ellice Carrington have bought Thea’s dream home and she thinks of them as ‘the invaders.’ Thea is a very private person who tells very little about her life to anyone. But she and Frank eventually do develop a kind of rapport. Then, Frank’s twelve-year-old niece Kim comes to live with him and Elllice. Perhaps because Kim’s not threatening, and perhaps because Thea recognises real talent when she sees it (Kim is a born writer), Thea strikes up a friendship with Kim despite her dislike of strangers. And for her part, Kim likes Thea very much despite her prickliness. They end up telling more about themselves to each other than either thought would happen. But that’s precisely what leads to tragedy when Thea begins to suspect that Frank and Ellice are not providing a safe and appropriate home for Kim…

We normally think of sharing confidences with trusted friends and family members. But it’s odd how sometimes, people feel most comfortable talking with a stranger on a bus, a park bench, or a gym. And I haven’t even mentioned the myriad novels in which it’s the sleuth who’s the sympathetic stranger…

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Dave Bartholomew and Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino’s True Confession.